THE HEART OF THE BELIEVER
D. A. Steven
Romans 10: 8–10; Acts 16: 13–15; 2 Kings 10: 15–17; 1 Samuel 1: 4–11, 13–18, 20–22, 24–28; 2: 1–3
It is in my heart to say a word about the references in these scriptures to the heart. The first scripture in Romans is how we begin our Christian life. We have come to know the Lord Jesus as our Saviour; we have opened our hearts to Him. It is a wonderful thing to know that.
As I look round on my brethren here, I look round on persons who have hearts that have been opened to Him, and have let Him come into their hearts. He has His place there, but then it says, “The word is near thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart—that is, the word of faith, which we preach—that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord”, so there has to be a confession made. We have to use our mouths to confess the blessed One whom we have let into our hearts. It brings about salvation; it is not only that you have to confess with your mouth, but “shalt believe in thine heart that God has raised him from among the dead, thou shalt be saved”. I think it is clear that this can help us in many circumstances as a Christian.
You find yourself in difficult circumstances, and something arises where you have to make a decision. If you are asked to do something which you know in your heart and in your conscience is not right to do, then the scripture is here, “confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord”. That is the answer to the problem and it will get you out of the difficulty because it says you will be saved; you will be saved from going into conditions and circumstances that in your conscience you know are not right.
Well it is a very testing thing. I know myself, I humbly confess to the brethren, that I have not been a good confessor in my younger days. You find it easier perhaps to slink away, but this scripture has been in my
heart recently, so I just read it that we might be encouraged as believers to confess the Lord Jesus. It will bring about salvation. You confess with your mouth, it is something you say.
You use your mouth, God has given us a mouth, and He has given it to us for this purpose; and many other things of course, not only to confess His name but to praise Him, to worship Him. This is a believing heart, and the woman in Acts has an opened heart, and Jehu has a united heart, and Hannah has a worshipful heart. That is the line that is in my heart to speak about briefly. It says, “if thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in thine heart that God has raised him from among the dead”. The confession is not the confession that God has raised Him from the dead, that is in your heart. It is placed there, that is your secret. When the Lord Jesus was raised from the dead no one saw that, not even those who loved Him, who came to the grave to see Him. They loved Him and wondered where He had gone; there was a measure of unbelief, but One greater had been there before. They came there and there was nothing, the stone was rolled away and He was not there. He was raised by the glory of the Father. That is a secret you have in your heart. The world does not know about that, it is not a matter for the world; it is something you keep in your heart, it is a rock to your soul, it is a foundation you can stand on. There is no other foundation, “other foundation can no man lay”, Paul says, “besides that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1
Corinthians 3: 11), and it is Jesus Christ as risen, the One who is at the right hand of the glory of the Father. So it is a thing that you keep in your heart, then you prove that “if thou shalt confess with thy mouth ... and shalt believe in thine heart that God has raised him from among the dead, thou shalt be saved”. It is a wonderful thing to enjoy salvation.
I speak now briefly of the woman in Acts 16 because the Lord opened her heart. Well, that is another question whether we have opened our hearts “to attend to the things spoken by Paul”.
My exercise is that something prophetic may come into the word and that it might not be a simple address, dear brethren. I trust the Spirit will make something of what I am saying that might be prophetic. I think there is a great challenge to what Paul has outlined in Scripture for us; the ministry of Paul has been challenged publicly in the world, in Christendom, by men who should know better, men who know the Scriptures, and yet they are not governed by them; they are not instructed, they are not attending to the things spoken by Paul. We are enlightened believers and here is this woman, “a certain woman, by name Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, who worshipped God, heard; whose heart the Lord opened to attend to the things spoken by Paul”. Here they were, down at the riverside, “where it was the custom for prayer to be”. Think of that, what a custom that was! Paul found himself there amongst these people.
Well, we find ourselves, as is our custom, at the prayer meeting on Monday evenings. How precious that is and I think it should be a custom with us; it is a custom with us. The prayer meeting is probably one of the most important meetings in the week. I think Mr. Taylor has said that and I can understand it, because we come together on the Lord’s day to remember the Lord and enter into the service of God, and we have our readings and preachings, and we surely come together to pray for results on Monday evenings, and thank God for His goodness. How much we have to be thankful for, so the prayer meeting is an occasion which should not be missed. The prayer meeting is one we should be at, and Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday of course, but at the prayer meeting. It was their custom to be there. Well I just say that and I trust the brethren do not feel upset about it.
As they sat down and spoke to the women, you think of the feelings they had. I suppose Paul would pray with them, he certainly spoke to them. Then Lydia was baptised and her house, and she said, “If ye have judged
me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house”, so there is a baptised house. What a wonderful thing, a baptised house where the owner was a seller of purple; she was a dignified person, working away righteously, and seeking to hold her household for the Lord, a baptised household. It is a wonderful thing to have children baptised and held for the Lord, to bring them up in the admonition and fear of the Lord. That is what baptism means, dear brethren, I am sure we all understand that. We do not bring them up for the world, we bring them up for Christ that He may enter their young hearts at an early age, that they may confess with their mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in their heart that God has raised Him from among the dead.
So she attended to the things spoken by Paul. How great were the things Paul had spoken!
Probably the greatest teaching he brought before the saints was Christ and the assembly; that was left to Paul. He was never called Paul of Tarsus, he was always called Saul of Tarsus. I just thought about that the other day and that is very beautiful because Saul of Tarsus was converted and then he got another name. God gave him another name, he gave him the name of Paul and He was going to use him to bring out the great thoughts of God; He was going to use this man who was converted on the Damascus road, Saul of Tarsus, who was now going to be called Paul. It means ‘little’ and Paul took that on, and demonstrated that, he never took advantage in a fleshly way of the authority that God had given him. He took advantage of it spiritually; he spoke about “I, Paul”. He often spoke about himself but it was not in any presumptuous way, but he had much to say, and that was one of the things he taught and it is precious to us. He speaks about a man being united to his wife, and then he says, “but I speak as to Christ, and as to the assembly”, Ephesians 5: 32. It is a wonderful truth! We have that truth in our hearts, and this woman had been attending to these things. Perhaps that truth had not come fully out then, of course, but there were other things that Paul had taught.
I just turn to 2 Kings now because it speaks here of a united heart. Jehu was on a mission here, for God had sent him to do this, but he is exercised that he might have someone with him. I think there is a principle in this. Jehu says to Jehonadab, “Is thy heart right, as my heart is with thy heart?” And he said, “It is—If it be, give me thy hand—And he gave him his hand”. I am sure there is a lesson in that. It would prevent us from independence. I would hate to go and do a thing without having the absolute assurance that my heart was right with the brethren, that we were thinking the same thing. We had a word recently as to thinking one thing, and thinking the same thing in the uniting bond of peace. Paul speaks about the unity of the Spirit, “using diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the uniting bond of peace”, Ephesians 4: 3. That is how it works; Is thy heart right with my heart? Here is this man, he is on this war mission to defeat the enemy, and he finds Jehonadab and the first thing he says is, “Is thy heart right, as my heart is with thy heart?” If Jehonadab had said, ‘No it certainly is not’, would he have still gone? We do not know about that, but it is clear for Jehonadab says, “It is—If it be, give me thy hand—And he gave him his hand; and Jehu took him up to him into the chariot, and said, Come with me, and see my zeal for Jehovah”; and of course the result was secured for God. I think there is a challenge in that for us, dear brethren, as to whether our hearts are united. I would leave that with us as to these matters that come up amongst us, these sorrowful matters. Are we united in heart about them?
So it says here about Hannah that she had been feeling things. The thing about it was, that every time Elkanah went up to sacrifice, Peninnah caused Hannah to fret and be upset. It is a terrible thing when you get jealousy; I suppose it would be that; I do not know, because Elkanah gave Hannah a double portion. Peninnah knew that Hannah did not have a child and she goaded her. That is a terrible feature. I am not saying it is amongst us, but it is a terrible feature, that kind of thing, and yet it brought out a beautiful feature in Hannah, that she never retorted, she never answered back. It was really like the spirit of Christ, “who, when reviled, reviled not again”, 1 Peter 2: 23. You think of what He went through and there was nothing said, no answer back. How perfect He was! But this was the spirit that marked Hannah, “she wept and did not eat”. And Elkanah her husband said to her, “why is thy heart grieved?” And then she comes to God about it and prays and it says, “Now Hannah spoke in her heart”. She asked God, she had a judgment about the situation that was extant at the time.
As we know, at the end of Judges, “there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes”, Judges 21: 25. How like the present time, in Christendom. But she had a clear picture in her mind of what was needed, and she asked God for a man child. This has often been spoken of, but what is in my heart to say is that she “spoke in her heart; only her lips moved”. How feeling that is, “only her lips moved” but God heard; God heard her and this brought in peace to her soul. Eli misunderstood and he was adjusted, but God heard this woman. It says in John’s epistle, “And this is the boldness which we have towards him, that if we ask him anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions which we have asked of him”, 1 John 5: 14, 15. Now Hannah asked this of God, and God knew better than Hannah that Samuel was needed. He knew about Samuel before Hannah did, so Hannah was in complete accord with the mind of God in asking for a man child. She got her prayer answered and went away “and her countenance was no more as before”. She called him Samuel, meaning ‘heard of God’.
She came away having peace in her soul. She had spread the whole matter out before God and she left it with God; what was needed was a man child. She asked God for it, she was prepared to bring the child up as a Nazarite, with no razor coming on his head. No crown of the world was to go on that boy’s head, sport or commerce, nothing of the world; he was to be brought up as a man child for God’s service and to be here as he was, a prophet. It says of him that God never let one word of his fall to the ground. This was the kind of boy that she had, and she would not go up until she had weaned him, which means, of course, that she wanted him weaned away from her, that he was able then to leave her, that the natural side had no longer a hold over her son and he was to go in to the house of God. “So Hannah prayed, and said, My heart exulteth in Jehovah”; this is the answer to the prayer. Her heart was welling forth with a good matter, there was no doubt about that. Do our hearts well forth with a good matter? When we have our prayers answered, is there a welling forth with the good matter that the Spirit puts in our hearts? It is a heart matter, dear brethren; it is a believing heart in Romans, it is an opened heart in Acts. Well is that so with us, an opened heart to the things spoken by Paul? Then it is a united heart, and now it is a worshipping heart. May these things affect us and be an encouragement to us, for His name’s sake.
Word in meeting for ministry, Grangemouth
4 November 2003
Edited and Published by J. Strachan, 59 Frederick Street, Dundee, DD3 9DE, Scotland Printed by Crystal Stationery, 22 Western Road, Billericay, Essex CM12 9DZ, (T) (01277) 650661